Page 39 of Jackie

“You tell me what you want to say, Jack. I’ll write it down. We’ll go from there.”

Jack

He should be grateful. He knows it. Everyone tells him. He’s lucky he isn’t dead. They tell him that too. But he’s just so sick of being sick. Sometimes it seems he’ll never be anything else.

Four days before Christmas, he’s released. They get him up on a gurney and wheel him through the hospital corridors, out into the wind and the rush of the light. The seasons have changed.

He’s missed weeks, months.

—

Back in the world of his father’s house in Palm Beach, the wide lawn stretching to the seawall, bougainvillea and barrier hedges that separate the house from the road. The sun, the warmth, the pool, the tennis court, a blue-bright sky and lines of palm trees, the brittle rustle of their fronds—those sounds and smells he loves.

Ramps have been installed so he can move from room to room.

—

“Can I help you do that?” she’ll say.

“Do you need an extra pillow on that chair?”

“Would you like to work on the book today?”

—

He should be grateful. He’s lucky he survived. Everyone tells him. Lucky to have her. They remark on how devoted she’s been. Collecting research materials, articles, passages, sending drafts of his essays to Sorensen, making notes on the drafts sent back. All for the book he’s writing on eight leaders who embody political courage. Reams of yellow-lined paper, his notes she’s transcribed—all of it organized, then typewritten into pages, margins filled with her handwritten edits.

—

He makes it through the Chrismas holidays, but by January, he’s ready to crawl out of his skin.

—

One afternoon by the pool, he overhears her talking to his sister Jean.

“When we decided it was best to spend the winter here in Palm Beach,” she says, “we gave up the lease on the house in Georgetown. We’ve talked about building our own house once we get through this and Jack is well again. Something simple. A one-story high up on a hill, maybe with views of the river.”

“Too expensive,” he says.

She bites down on her lip, a faintly crushed expression on her face he regrets. Her shoulders are sunburned. He floats near the side of the pool. Pushing off with the ball of his foot, he feels a sharp twang in his back.

There’s a Glenn Miller record on the turntable. Strains of music drift.

—

He can still barely navigate steps. He can’t bear weight on his left side. The pain shoots through his leg, even with the new protocol of steroids and a heel lift.

—

It’s only at night when he feels alive. His body no longer crippled but as strong as it was in the sea off Japan. Hauling boys out of the gasoline slick, calling for each. He was their captain. He’d made a fatal miscalculation and driven them into danger. He was determined to set the wrong right. He called their names, swimming toward each voice and the thrash of their arms, their faces lit with fear in that hell-black water.

—

He needs to get strong again. To be better and back in the swing of things. He needs to need her less.

—

At the end of May, he returns to the Senate. At the Capitol, he waves off the aides and the wheelchair, hobbles up the steps for a press photograph, and strolls in.

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